Europe’s Top Court Rules for Jehovah’s Witness Child in Medical-Bias Case

[Isabella]

LUXEMBOURG (CN) — A Latvian child who needed open-heart surgery prevailed Thursday in a religious discrimination case against the country’s Ministry of Health, which refused to sign on off on letting him undergo the procedure in another country where he wouldn’t require a blood transfusion.

Names are withheld from the ruling released this morning by the European Court of Justice. It says only that the child was a Jehovah’s Witness who needed surgery because of a congenital heart defect, and that in Latvia the procedure is not possible without a blood transfusion.

The boy’s parent requested a form called an S2 that would authorize treatment in Poland — presumably where the surgery can be performed without a transfusion — but Latvia’s National Health Service refused to comply. The family began fighting in court, losing every step of the way before the case reached Europe’s high court in Luxembourg, but ultimately the boy underwent heart surgery in Poland on April 22, 2017 — over a year after he was first denied an S2 form.

https://www.courthousenews.com/europes-top-court-rules-for-jehovahs-witness-child-in-medical-bias-case/